A rare post from Stephen
If you have
ever played golf with me, you will understand why I would not list it among my
many talents. That said, I’m always up for a hit - so when I discovered that
one of the highlights of crossing the Nullarbor is the chance to play a round
on the longest golf course in the world, I couldn’t resist.
Nullarbor Links is the world’s longest golf course and stretches an impressive 1,365 kilometres along the Eyre Highway, from Ceduna in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. It consists of 18 holes, with one hole located at each participating town or roadhouse along the way. You can play it east to west or west to east — provided you survive both the golf and the drive.
To get
started, you purchase a scorecard from the visitor centre at Ceduna or
Kalgoorlie for $78. You can also hire clubs - and thankfully for me, they had a
left‑handed set available. The clubs had definitely seen better days and were
slightly shorter than ideal. I’m confident these factors were entirely
responsible for my poor scores… and not my ability. This is what I kept telling
Jo anyway as an excuse for why I played so badly. The set included a non-descript
driver (actually made of wood), a 4, 6 and 8 iron and a putter -also far too
short!
You wouldn’t want to use a good set of clubs anyway, because the ‘fairways’ are really just large patches of scrub that have had the scrub removed, leaving bare earth, rocks, and whatever nature feels like putting in your way that day. The official marketing information describes each hole as featuring “a green and a tee” with “outback‑style natural terrain fairways.” Honestly, 10 out of 10 for marketing - that’s an impressively optimistic way of saying it’s rough.
At Ceduna, while I was playing the first two holes, a greenkeeper wandered over, had a brief look at me lining up a shot, and handed me a generous stash of extra golf balls saying, “You’ll need as many of these as you can get.” I’m still not entirely sure whether he was making a general observation about what lay ahead on the Nullarbor Links - or whether he’d already seen enough of my swing to know this was going to be a ball‑losing exercise. Either way, it turned out to be excellent advice.
The tees and greens along the course are astroturf, with the exceptions being Ceduna (sand) and Kalgoorlie (which boasts the finest greens I’ve ever played on). Kalgoorlie was particularly intimidating - a proper golf course populated by actual golfers - and I felt completely out of place rocking up in dusty clothes with my battle‑scarred hire clubs. That said, the girl in the pro shop was very nice and helpful and even offered us a cart so we could have a look around the course afterwards.
The course presents some unique hazards, including but not limited to snakes, shingleback lizards, flies, more flies, dust, rocks, thorny spiky scrub, and the possibility of losing your ball forever if you hit it more than ten metres off line. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), the whole thing is genuinely fun and a great way to break up a very long drive.
One of the biggest challenges, surprisingly, is finding where the tee actually is. The scorecard offers very little guidance, so the usual process involves asking whoever happens to be working at the roadhouse, often a backpacker, where the tee might be. This typically results in instructions like “Just head out the back past the giant kangaroo holding a jar of Vegemite. You can’t miss it.”
Sometimes the hole is only metres away. Other times, it’s several kilometres down a dirt track. Every location is unique.
Once you’ve played the hole, you return to the roadhouse to get your scorecard stamped — which, in my case, was often an exercise in quiet embarrassment.
Most
locations have one hole, with Ceduna and Kalgoorlie hosting two each on real
golf courses. Completing the full course felt strangely satisfying, even if the
score itself is best left undocumented.
I would highly recommend the Nullarbor Links experience to anyone crossing the Nullarbor - even if you’re not a golfer. It’s challenging, a bit ridiculous, lots of fun, and completely unlike any other round you’ll ever play. And I was rewarded at the end with a certificate to prove I persevered throughout the entire 18 holes.
Finally, a huge shout‑out to my extremely capable caddy, Jo. She displayed remarkable patience, laughed at me only occasionally, only dropped the clubs a few times, and showed exceptional commitment to hunting down golf balls that had gone off course - of which there were many.
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